


To Be A Follower (And What Happens When You're Not Anymore)

by Eissel



Series: District and Circle [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I am a Proud Member of the Percy Defense Squad, Inspired by Poetry, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eissel/pseuds/Eissel
Summary: I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, yapping always. But today it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me, and will not go away. - Follower, Seamus Heaney.It’s years since the war ended, and Percy didn’t come home. Arthur asks him why.
Relationships: Arthur Weasley & Percy Weasley
Series: District and Circle [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640434
Comments: 7
Kudos: 186





	To Be A Follower (And What Happens When You're Not Anymore)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m back on my bullshit considering this is yet another exploration of Weasley family dynamics… And it’s not the one I promised. Whoops.  
> (Also Seamus Heaney is a god at exploring complicated father-son dynamics do not @ me about this)

Arthur doesn’t mean to turn up on his third-oldest son’s doorstep like some wayward newspaper page.

But he does anyways. 

The sun is high in the sky, no cloud cover to shade the unfortunate souls who had picked that day to venture out and do shopping. Arthur fidgets on the step, considering if he should press the small cream colored button inlaid into the brick wall. 

He doesn’t get the chance to choose because the door swings open, and he’s face to face with his third son, the boy who left. 

“Dad?” Arthur tries not to flinch when he hears the new layer Percy’s voice has acquired, tries to put images of the tiny boy who clung to his mother’s skirts out of his mind. 

(He’s failed the boy twice, and it hurts to acknowledge that) 

“Hello Percy.” He greets quietly. It feels so strange, like they themselves were strangers, who could have passed, like ships in the night, on the streets, never once saying a word. “How have you been?” 

“Would you like to come in?” Percy asks in lieu of answering the question. Arthur doesn’t know if that should give him hope or fill him with dread. 

When he walks inside, the room surprises him in a way it honestly shouldn’t have. It’s not spacious, it’s a flat, and Percy had never been one for wide open sapces, but it’s comfortable enough. It’s tastefully decorated, but oddly sparse. 

Then it hits him. 

Percy has no pictures up on the walls, but he has personal mementos to replace them. That’s why it feels so odd. 

“You haven’t had the chance to buy a camera? Just what is Kingsley paying you?” He jokes weakly, abashed when Percy glances to the cream colored walls and his eyes narrow just a sliver. 

“I haven’t had much to take pictures of.” Which breaks Arthur’s heart, but also soothes him in a strange contradictory manner. When he was little Percy had liked to steal Arthur’s camera away and takes photos, but- 

_ “Look at the photo I took Da!” He crowed, waving the little square high in the air. Arthur had chuckled and taken it, and stilled as he  _ **_looked_ ** _ at it.  _

_ “Why did you take this picture Percy?” He asked quietly.  _

_ “It looked like the house.” He says with simple, childish honesty.  _

_ “I see.” He says, because he  _ **_did_ ** _ , and that honestly hurt more than any punch because that meant that Percy still didn’t see the Burrow as  _ **_home_ ** _ , just saw it as the place he lived now that the war was over.  _

“That’s a shame. I know you used to love taking pictures.” Percy nods absentmindedly, and he starts to turn away.

“Do you want something to drink? I’m not quite sure how long you’ve been waiting, I’ve only just come back-”

“Ah, don’t let me impose too much, I know you have a lot of work-” Percy’s head bows, and his mouth does a strange movement that makes his expression unreadable for a second. 

“Right.” He says shortly. “Let me go make that tea. I’ll be right back.” As he leaves, Arthur flounders for a second, unsure of what he had done wrong. Percy had always been sort of a fey child when compared to the rest of the boys, and that meant that Arthur never could truly connect with him all that well.

He stands in the clean flat, and looks around helplessly, trying to find something he could use to make conversation when his wayward son returned. 

A glimmer attracts his attention from over by the desk, and he realizes he was wrong.

There is  _ one  _ picture in the flat. A muggle one, unmoving, capturing the people within with an eerie stillness. 

As he picks it up, he notices the frame, and how it’s worn and dull. Percy hasn’t revarnished it, which probably spoke to its sentimental value. The picture itself is nothing special, it’s of several people, in front of a tall building, holding a banner that’s too faded to make out legibly anymore.

He wonders if it was faded when the picture was taken. 

He recognizes a few faces, like Penelope Clearwater or Oliver Wood, but the rest slip through his memories like water through a vice. Percy isn’t there, which means he was probably the photographer. 

Beneath the spot he picked the frame up from is a mound of letters, no names that he can see. The envelopes are varied though, some sticking to crisp white, some dark red, one a periwinkle blue. One with a golden ribbon looped through a hole. 

“I only had black, is that okay?” Percy’s voice cuts through Arthur’s musings like a heated knife through butter. 

“Yes, it is.” The tension is thick as Percy’s eyes track Arthur’s movements like a hawk. He sets down the photo and sits on the chocolate brown settee, directly across from Percy’s cushioned chair he’s dragged over from his desk. “Do you have any milk?” He doesn’t know why, but that one question feels more like he’s loading a muggle gun. 

“I do. Do you want me to get the whole carton?” And that response felt like Percy was bracing himself for a confrontation, which, in all honesty, wasn’t  _ unwise. _

“That would be good, thank you.”

When had they become such strangers? Or had they always been strangers, and Arthur had never noticed?

_ Maybe in hindsight, he should have realized. Percy never really saw him as a father figure. That was for Gideon and Fabian Prewett, the two men who had actually been around.  _

Percy sets the carton down, and the only noise is the clinking of spoons against the walls of the tea cups and the ticking clock. The sun streams in from the back window, and if he strains himself, he can hear the light chatter of the residents of the sleepy town of Wisbech slowly going about business.

“What brings you down to Wisbech?” Percy asks after a time, gaze locked on the floor. 

“Can’t I just be here to talk?”

“You haven’t before, and you aren’t going to start now.” His voice is bitter like the unsweetened tea. 

“That’s not true Percy-”

“You’re here to ask why I never came back.” He cuts in. “And I’ll tell you, like I told everyone else who’s asked, that if you have to  _ ask  _ then you don’t understand. And you won’t.”

“Percy-”

“I refuse to be in your shadow any longer Father.” Which is such a cold statement that it takes Arthur aback. Percy is pompous and prideful, and yes, he can be impersonal, but h had never been this frigid.

Even in their row (so many years in the past but it still haunts them now, still dogs their footsteps like a twisted shadow), Percy had never been cold. He had run angry and hot, because he was cut of the same cloth as Molly, had inherited the Prewett temper.

“You were never in my  _ shadow  _ Percy.” He pleads, for if anything, it had been the opposite. Arthur Weasley had been devoured by the shades of his sons, all 6 of them. 

(He does not think of words whispered in private when the boys were all too childishly confident that he could not hear, he does not think of the hurt he felt when Percy, the only one to keep those words to himself screamed them at him cloaked in wounded pride and honor and misguided duty)

“Yes I was. Ever since I was a child, I was in your shadow. The child of Arthur Weasley, the third Weasley child. I was always defined in terms of the family, never defined by myself. When I got to Hogwarts? Same thing. Even when I got to the Ministry, people would greet me and ask if I was ‘Arthur’s kid.’ I was in your shadow.”

Arthur wants to argue that he was caught in Percy’s shadow too, but that’s not quite true either. Yes, for the first year or so, maybe, but after Voldemort’s return and Fudge’s sacking, not so much. 

(And perhaps he had laughed too loudly at mean spirited jokes, and maybe he had held onto lingering resentment after Percy refused to visit him in St. Mungoes, but that was his due, Weasleys were supposed to support each other after all.) 

“Percy-”

“And then, when I was finally starting to get some recognition of my own, because your claim that I was promoted because of my ties to you turned out to be  _ nothing _ , you belittled me.” Percy still refused to look at him, and Arthur didn’t know if that was better or worse. “You didn’t earn this Percy, your  _ connections  _ did.” He mocked. “Your  _ family  _ did. You should’ve heard yourself, for a second I thought I was face to face with Lucious Malfoy.” All the anger seeped out of his voice, leaving only exhaustion. “Which I suppose was just as well. You were right in the end.”

“Percy, this isn’t about me being  _ right- _ ”

“Isn’t it?” His voice was quiet, Arthur hesitated to say something else. Percy sat in the chair rigidly, staring out at the back window. “Percy, won’t you just come home, won’t you come back and realize you were wrong? Won’t you come back home to your siblings and let them mock and tease you again? Won’t you come back and have a constant reminder that you were wrong hanging over your head? Won’t you come back and  _ apologize? _ ”

“Percy, be fair about this, you do owe at the very least  _ myself  _ an apology.”

“Do I really?”

The phone rang in the background, punctuating the silence. Neither moved to pick it up. 

“Yes, yes you do. You were out of line.”

“And you weren’t?” Arthur stumbled over his jumble of thoughts. 

“You’re my son, you owe me at least the tiniest sense of respect.”

“I was an adult then, and I am an adult now. Don’t patronize me.” He sighed heavily, and got up. “I think that this has gone on for long enough Father.”

“You won’t throw me out.” Arthur said. “You won’t.” 

Percy looked at him, and Arthur felt cold. 

“That’s what I said.” Percy whispered, and collected the cups. “I said that you wouldn’t throw me out, and you said-”

“ _ I will Percy. I will. You’re out of line, how dare you say that about Harry, about Dumbledore, about  _ **_me_ ** _. _ ”

Arthur reddened shamefully at the memory. 

“You still won’t.” Arthur said firmly. “Because you still love us. Percy, just come back, we’re not trying to brow beat you into saying you were wrong, or even asking for an apology. We’re asking for you to come back.”

“You’re asking for a concession.” Percy fired back, having averted his gaze. “I’m not coming back home. I won’t give that to you.” 

“You’re still so prideful Percy.”

“Pride? Is that what you call having basic self-respect? Get out of my flat Father.”

“You can’t throw me out Percy.”

“Yes, yes I can.” In the sunlight, Percy looked fragile, his glasses (black and square, more modern than any pair Arthur had ever bought him) were slightly askew, and his red hair looked thin and wispy in the light. 

He looked at Arthur directly, and Arthur looked away. 

Silence reigned, and Arthur stepped out. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Come talk to me about Percy on tumblr!](https://writ-eissel.tumblr.com/)


End file.
